Wednesday round-up

Posted Wed, May 22nd, 2013 11:23 am by Conor McEvily

Monday’s orders and opinions continue to generate coverage and commentary.

At this blog, Allison Christians analyzes the decision in PPL Corp. & Subsidiaries v. Commissioner, in which the Court unanimously held that the United Kingdom’s “windfall tax” is creditable against a company’s U.S. income tax liability. Ilya Shapiro also covers the case at Cato@Liberty. Also at this blog, Ronald Mann analyzes the opinion in Sebelius v. Cloer, another unanimous decision in which the Court held that an untimely National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act petition may qualify for an award of attorney’s fees if it is filed in good faith and there is a reasonable basis for its claim.

Other coverage of the Court focused on Monday’s opinion in City of Arlington v. FCC, in which the Court held by a six-to-three vote that courts must apply Chevron deference to an agency’s interpretation of a statutory ambiguity concerning the scope of the agency’s statutory authority. Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal reports on the decision, as do David Savage of the Los Angeles Times and Daniel Fisher of Forbes, both of whom focus on the disparate views of two of the Court’s “leading conservatives”: Justice Scalia, who wrote for the majority, and the Chief Justice, the author of the dissent. And at Cato@Liberty, Ilya Shapiro opines that the case “should make us question the whole doctrine of Chevron deference.”

Monday’s order list also continued to spark coverage yesterday. Among the cases in which the Court granted cert. was Town of Greece v. Galloway, in which the Court will consider whether a legislative prayer practice violates the Establishment Clause notwithstanding the absence of discrimination in the selection of prayer-givers or forbidden exploitation of the prayer opportunity. Jess Bravin reports on the case for The Wall Street Journal, while at Think Progress Ian Millhiser suggests that the case “explicitly tees up the question of whether a government ‘endorsement’ of religion . . . is permitted under the Constitution,” and at Lawyers.com Aaron Kase examines the different ways that the Court could resolve the dispute. Finally, at JURIST G. Redd notes that among the Court’s cert. denials on Monday was a case in which an Alaskan village claimed that greenhouse gas producers “should be held accountable to the village for pollution that threatens its vitality.”

Briefly:

The Chief Justice’s speech in Jamestown, New York, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Robert H. Jackson Center is available at WGRZ News.

And Tom Goldstein’s commencement address at the University of New Mexico’s School of Law is available on the school’s website.

Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys work for or contribute to this blog in various capacities, served as co-counsel to the petitioners in City of Arlington v. FCC.

If you have (or know of) a recent article or post that you would like to have included in the round-up, please send a link to roundup [at] scotusblog.comso that we can consider it.

Merits Case Pages and Archives

On Monday, the justices met for their September 25 conference. The justices removed Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project and Trump v. Hawaii from the court's October sitting. We expect orders from this conference on Thursday. The October 2017 term will begin on Monday, October 2. The calendar for the October sitting is available on the court's website.

Major Cases

Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project(1) Whether respondents’ challenge to the temporary suspension of entry of aliens abroad under Section 2(c) of Executive Order No. 13,780 is justiciable; (2) whether Section 2(c)’s temporary suspension of entry violates the Establishment Clause; (3) whether the global injunction, which rests on alleged injury to a single individual plaintiff, is impermissibly overbroad; and (4) whether the challenges to Section 2(c) became moot on June 14, 2017.

Gill v. Whitford(1) Whether the district court violated Vieth v. Jubelirer when it held that it had the authority to entertain a statewide challenge to Wisconsin’s redistricting plan, instead of requiring a district-by-district analysis; (2) whether the district court violated Vieth when it held that Wisconsin’s redistricting plan was an impermissible partisan gerrymander, even though it was undisputed that the plan complies with traditional redistricting principles; (3) whether the district court violated Vieth by adopting a watered-down version of the partisan-gerrymandering test employed by the plurality in Davis v. Bandemer; (4) whether the defendants are entitled, at a minimum, to present additional evidence showing that they would have prevailed under the district court’s test, which the court announced only after the record had closed; and (5) whether partisan-gerrymandering claims are justiciable.

Carpenter v. United StatesWhether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cellphone records revealing the location and movements of a cellphone user over the course of 127 days is permitted by the Fourth Amendment.

Conference of September 25, 2017

Collins v. Virginia Whether the Fourth Amendment's automobile exception permits a police officer, uninvited and without a warrant, to enter private property, approach a house and search a vehicle parked a few feet from the house.

Butka v. Sessions Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit erred in this case by holding that it had no jurisdiction to review the denial of a motion to reopen by the Board of Immigration Appeals, where the review sought was limited to assessing the legal framework upon which the sua sponte request was made.

National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra Whether the free speech clause or the free exercise clause of the First Amendment prohibits California from compelling licensed pro-life centers to post information on how to obtain a state-funded abortion and from compelling unlicensed pro-life centers to disseminate a disclaimer to clients on site and in any print and digital advertising.

On August 16, Judge Jon Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit gave a lecture, “The Supreme Court — Then and Now,” in which he compared the Supreme Court today to the court in October Term 1957, when Newman served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren.